Zimmer ($169.5 million), Johnson and Johnson’s DePuy Orthopedics ($84.7 million), Smith & Nephew ($28.9 million) and Biomet ($26.9 million) agreed in late September to pay $311 million to settle allegations they induced surgeons to use their hip and knee replacement devices through kickback payments. By settling the case, which the Justice Department has pursued since 2005, the manufacturers avoided admitting any wrongdoing; however, they also agreed to subject to 18 months of corporate monitoring and enhanced transparency. Stryker cooperated with the government and entered into a non-prosecution pact, but agreed to submit to the same disclosure requirements and scrutiny as the other companies.
In addition, each of the implant makers disclosed financial ties to physician using or endorsing their products, and posted on their Web sites last fall the names, cities and dollar amounts paid to physician consultants. It is such physicians that the federal government appears to now be targeting.
The New York Times reports:
?We are going to be looking at those soliciting kickbacks,? Lewis Morris, the chief counsel in the federal office that pursues civil complaints of Medicare fraud, told an audience of hundreds of doctors, company representatives and investors this month in San Francisco at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons.
The same message has gone out to health care lawyers attending legal education seminars in recent months and, directly from Christopher J. Christie Jr., the United States attorney in Newark, who is overseeing the investigation. Executives say Mr. Christie has addressed sales meetings of the five companies, which reached a settlement last fall to avoid prosecution on charges they had routinely paid illegal kickbacks to surgeons.
…
Although industry executives say they have heard that some doctors have received subpoenas, none have been publicly identified. ?Our investigation is continuing into the conduct of individual surgeons,? Michael Drewniak, the spokesman for the United States attorney?s office in Newark, said Friday.
Biomet, DePuy, Smith & Nephew, Stryker and Zimmer produce nearly 95 percent of the orthopedic devices marketed in the United States. Two smaller manufacturers, Wright Medical Group and Exactech, also received subpoenas in December.
